


even the powerful

by aubadezayn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky is not very touchy feely, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Kidnapping, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Sensory Deprivation, Triggers, torture (mild)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8053645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aubadezayn/pseuds/aubadezayn
Summary: someone on tumblr requested for Captain America to have a reasonable reaction to traumatic events, i.e. Steve has a panic attack. (partially because he cares so much about Bucky, and Bucky was put in danger)u can visit me on tumblr @ frnkenstein :)





	even the powerful

When Steve opens his eyes its to the forced darkness of a blindfold, which immediately sets his body on edge. His muscles tense against ropes wrapped all along his limbs, and his ears strain against earplugs that block all noise and identifiers. Like this, he can’t decipher where he’s at, not at all.

 

He also can’t tell if anyone is with him, which is even worse. He and Bucky had only gone out to patrol around Brooklyn that evening, Steve hadn’t even been in uniform. There were no anticipated threats, no reason for alarm.

 

It seems like eternity that Steve lays there in limbo, suspended in the dark silence with only the panicked beat of his heart and the rapid procession of his thoughts for company. Then he feels gentle fingers on his face, dancing almost mockingly along his cheekbones. He tries to twist away, but the ropes are unbreakable and allow for very little movement. The person taps the ear plugs in his ears teasingly and then the sensation is gone. He feels alone, though the person may be still standing in front of him, watching him struggle.

 

The teasing, mocking touch assures him they are in enemy territory and it makes his blood run cold.

 

He has to get free somehow, though he’s fresh out of ideas. He has to get to Bucky.

 

It’s days, or months, or years, before he’s touched again. This time they remove the earplugs, and all he hears is ringing before his ears focus in on their captor’s breathing. The person breathes heavily, with a slight wheezy rasp at the end of each inhale. It tells Steve nothing about who they are, or what they want.

 

They don’t put the earplugs back in, but they leave. Their footsteps are heavy, maybe male? Or a heavier female, someone with heavy shoes? Steve has images of Brock in his mind, of his big black combat boots stomping away from Steve to wherever Bucky’s being held. That’s improbable though, because he can still remember the smell of burning flesh when Brock blew himself up.

 

He has to get to Bucky, that’s all he allows himself to dwell on; on a constant loop in his mind, _get Bucky home_.

 

But that’s not the only thought he has, though his others make him feel guilty and selfish. They revolve around the aching of his joints, as the serum tries to heal tensed and constrained muscles that receive no relief. These selfish thoughts revolve around how awful the sense deprivation is, and how it draws him straight back to that awful time after he woke up in the modern age where he could still feel the cold in his veins. That time where he felt like he couldn’t _feel_ anything, everything was too much for his mind so he spent months trying to beat the feeling back into himself.

 

It feels irrevocably selfish to think of himself when Bucky is out there, possibly being tortured or converted to the Soldier again. (That doesn’t stop him.)

 

* * *

 

They come back in slow, distant intervals to remove one more layer of deprivation. The time after the earbuds is the ropes around his ankles, which finally allows proper blood flow into his feet that the serum doesn’t have to constantly fight for. He wiggles his tired and numb toes till the sensation is fully operable and waits, planning patiently.

 

The next is the ropes around his knees and thighs, twisted in spirals all around his muscled legs. His legs are filled with pins and needles from the blood finally properly flowing, and he can’t help but wonder what the fuck kind of material the ropes were made of. Nothing can hold him, nothing can hold the serum – and yet. (It scares him more than anything, that whoever has taken them is capable of restraining him.)

 

The next to be removed are the handcuffs that pin his hands behind his back. They are replaced immediately with gentle shackles, that feel as if they might break with just a flex of the wrist. He doesn’t break out of them, though, and he fears that might be the point they are making. It’s been so long, too long, an unknown amount of time, and fear holds him back from breaking free. He, the man who shattered his way out of an elevator and flew out of a plane sans parachute, is _afraid_.

 

Whoever they are, they’ve proven they can restrain him, and that they know his weak spot. Fear keeps Captain America pinned in what very well might be cheap suede shackles.

 

The next thing the unknown captor removes is the blindfold, and this is by far the most startling to his system. He feels their hands on his face first, and is horrified by how his skin pimples and shivers at the touch. Then the fabric slides off, and he opens his eyes…and there is nothing. For a terrible, awful moment he’s convinced he’s gone blind. That they’ve blinded him.

 

He doesn’t know how to fight blind. (He’s forgotten since he became Captain America what it was like to have disabilities at all, he’d be hard pressed to fight with a complete one.)

 

Then he realizes, when they walk away, and open a door far off that the lights are simply off.

 

He’s even more scared to admit the massive sigh of relief he gives, and the small smidge of gratefulness he feels towards their captor. They could have done worse…

 

 

The final thing to be removed are the ropes twined around his arms, and the collar around his neck. He’d learned in his struggle that it was chained to the wall, and they let it fall heavily to the floor.

 

They leave.

 

 

* * *

 

The _actual_ final thing to be removed is the darkness and silence.

 

This is when it happens.

 

* * *

 

He has no idea how long it’s been at this point; it could be actual months. Maybe years.

 

He’s been in the silence so long he’s forgotten what sound is like. He’s forgotten what light looks like. Wherever Bucky is, maybe he has more fight, maybe _he_ is not paralyzed by fear like Steve is. Steve is paralyzed by his fear, and he’s paralyzed by the fact that he’s fearful at all. His heart pounds to the beat of his own anxiety, and his own embarrassment at being anxious at all.

 

He is half-asleep, lost in the timeless darkness and so hungry and tired. By the pinprick on his arm, they’ve installed an IV at some point, and it keeps him barely alive. Just enough, just drowsy and weak enough to float seamlessly in and out of consciousness.

 

Suddenly, alarms blare from every corner of his prison as fluorescent lights switch on. The synapses in his brain explode and he cries out, rolling to bury his face in the hard concrete ground. He tries to get up but it’s too much, it’s all too much, his head is exploding. He’s never experienced pain like this, not even when he was smaller and more human. Steve Rogers ceases to exist in that moment, and he is raw nerves laid out at his captor’s feet.

 

The lights slowly fade out, though they exist far longer behind his eyelids. The sound stays on. Till his head is filled with darkness and blaring alarms and the sound of his own humanity mocking him.

 

Because Captain America may be strong, and fearless and nearly immortal, but Steve Rogers is as fallible as any other fearful, vulnerable human being.

 

The great Captain America collapses into his panic and anxiety and fear, like a star falling into a supernova.

 

* * *

 

Thor carries him out of the Institute in his arms, stepping past the bodies of dead HYDRA members and a mass of FBI agents. Steve doesn’t know this until later, because his eyes are squeezed as shut as possible the entire time. The light is abrasive, the voices are painful, he closes it all out.

 

Bucky is placed in the bed next to his in the hospital and he looks…mostly okay. No visible scarring or bruising, though there’s only a little of that on Steve where he struggled against the ropes and shackles. He seems fine, and Bucky says that himself in an almost annoyed tone when they’re both awoken by doctors and nurses asking questions.

 

They’re removed from the hospital shortly after, and things are _fine._

 

Bucky actually seems fine, he goes to the same recommended therapy sessions as Steve and comes out looking relieved. Steve leaves those sessions pretending like he’s fine, but feeling more like he’s walking on sharp rocks at the edge of a cliff. He couldn’t explain why he feels like this, not to the therapist, not to Bucky, not to Sam or Natasha. He can’t explain even to himself, why he can’t seem to fight off the fear.

 

But he’s Captain America, and Steve fucking Rogers so he puts on a brave face. No one seems to realize it’s shaky.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s three months after the kidnapping, in which Steve’s saved New York from a giant blob alien and Washington D.C. from a corrupt HYDRA presidential candidate, when he has his first panic attack.

 

Even before the serum, Steve had never had an attack like this, not unless it was asthmatic.

 

It starts innocently, with him making himself breakfast. Cereal in bowl. Milk in bowl. Mix up with spoon. Enjoy!

 

Then Bucky comes out from his room, and turns on the television.

 

It’s a television program on HBO, Steve thinks. All he knows is that the person on the screen is laying on a bed, handcuffed to the bed rail. He can’t draw his eyes away from their wrists, so fragile and shackled to the bed. It’s fake, he tells himself. They’re an actor, those are probably only pretend handcuffs anyway. They probably don’t even lock.

 

That doesn’t stop his muscles from tensing, and the hairs on the back of his neck from rising up. His nervous system has already started the fight-or-flight system, and it’s frozen in between the two.

 

Panic attacks aren’t like they show on television. He’s watched enough modern shows by now to be well acquainted with the fake version, fast and dramatic hyperventilating, crying, shaking.

 

The real version is more confusing and subtle, but no less terrible.

 

At first he thinks he’s swallowed his cereal down the wrong tube because he can’t seem to draw in a breath. Then he’s awash in dread, and the morbid sense that the entire world is falling around him. He feels like his heart is stopping, his jaw is locked, his arteries are collapsing. He throws out a hand onto the kitchen counter, the smack drawing Bucky’s gaze.

 

“Steve, you okay?” Bucky asks, confused.

 

Steve chews on that for a moment, the tightness in his chest increasing till it feels like someone has his heart in a vice. “I think I’m dying, Buck.”

 

“What?” Bucky pops off the couch immediately, and in three long strides is standing next to Steve. His face is impassive, but still subtly concerned. He hasn’t shown emotion like he did in the 40’s, but Steve can still read the growing fear in his eyes. “Steve-“

 

“I can’t breathe, I think-“ Steve presses his hand desperately into his chest, trying to squeeze past the skin and stop the pain. He can feel his eyes are watering but he doesn’t fully comprehend why. The whole world feels like molasses, and he’s both too aware, and completely unaware, of the dread surrounding him. “I’m going into cardiac arrest.”

 

“The serum, Steve-“ Bucky tries, one hand coming to rest on Steve’s shoulder and angling him towards the floor. Steve goes willingly, his muscles tight and tense. His chest aches like he’s having a heart attack but that’s totally illogical, Captain America doesn’t have heart problems.

 

“I can’t- I can’t breathe.” Steve chokes, the words squeezing past a tongue that feels like lead. He’s dying, this is the end. This is how Captain America dies.

 

“Yes, you can.” Bucky says, sternly and calmly. His metal hand just barely taps Steve’s tight fist before Steve’s desperately entwined their fingers. The cold metal is grounding, and shocks his system enough to distract him from the way his diaphragm won’t stretch. “You can breathe, Steve. Just do it.”

 

The logic is sound, but when Steve tries to _just do it_ his chest seizes and his other hand twists into his shirt. The edges of his vision are going oddly black, and he barely notices it. All he can see is the linoleum directly under his left foot, and all he can feel is the pain and immense dread of death coming.

 

“Breathe, Steve.” Bucky commands, and though it feels like lifting a thousand tons of steel through honey, Steve’s chest lifts with one shaky but big inhale. “Again.”

 

The second breath is easier.

 

From there, unraveling is natural. The blackness around his eyes recedes, and he’s forgotten his imminent death before he even realizes. His chest hurts far away, like a phantom ache. He’s propped against Bucky, and thinking of handcuffs, when he realizes he’s not having cardiac arrest, or dying, or choking on badly swallowed cereal.

 

“You okay?” Bucky asks again, metal thumb stroking over Steve’s hand.

 

“I-“ Steve stops. He doesn’t know how to describe that; he doesn’t know how to describe why it’s gone. Where it came on so fast, the panic receded just as fast, and left exhaustion in its path. He feels like he’s boxed a thousand rounds, or fought a mega-villain. “Yeah.” His voice is tired, like he’s had a bad bout of whooping cough, but the words just feel too heavy.

 

Even though death no longer seems to knocking down his door, he still feels heavy, and wrung out.

 

Bucky doesn’t make them get up, and they sit there on the floor together in the quiet morning silence. The television, muted, plays on.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


End file.
